“Striving for excellence motivates you; striving for perfection is demoralizing.” (Harriet Braiker, American psychologist and writer)

For years I’ve had a recurring dream. I’m on stage in a concert arena drumming for one of my favorite bands. The lights are flashing. The crowd is cheering. And then on cue, we launch into some complicated instrumental break. It’s at this point that I look around and realize that I am not really in this band, and there’s no way I’m talented enough to play the sorts of things I find myself playing. My hands grow heavy, the song falls apart, and the crowd becomes an angry, screaming throng.

I can only guess what Freud would have to say about these dreams, but I’ve always viewed them as a sobering commentary on both my aspirations as well as my limitations as an artist.

In his collection of journals entitled Confessions of a Barbarian, the twenty-five-year-old Edward Abbey ponders the progress he is making on his first novel:

“At times I’m afraid to read what I’ve written, almost superstitiously afraid—and then at other times I do work up enough courage to hastily read snatches chosen at random. The effects are mixed—parts of the book seem hilariously funny, beautifully written, packed and quivering with life. And then I’ll read the same passage again, or another, and it will seem dead as junkyard iron, pretentious and false, weak, thin, spineless, empty and hideous.”

I think all writers who are honest with themselves can relate to these sentiments. We have a vision of what we would like our words to achieve, yet in the process of giving form to this vision, we worry that something has somehow gotten lost. We rework the material—often to the point of draining away its life—because we fear that we’ve missed the mark artistically.

At a certain level, these sorts of self-doubts may be healthy, for they spur us on to perfect our skills. On the other hand, I’ve seen plenty of talented writers whose work is in a perpetual state of revision, and they never seem to muster the courage necessary to submit their material for publication.

Speaking personally, I realized a long time ago that I may never be as skilled as some of my favorite authors; that level of talent is rare in this world. Yet I still have a voice, and I’d like to think that I have at least a few things to say that others might be interested in reading. Will these pieces be perfect? Probably not, but that’s okay. Like a diamond, it’s often those slight imperfections that provide the most luster.

One of our blog readers made an excellent point in response to Part I of this series of blog posts (Thank you Katie!). She stated that most mysteries are more plot-driven than character-driven. This explains why in some mystery novels, the characters seem a little flat.

Luckily, I believe I have found a mystery writer whose stories are both plot and character driven: Dennis Lehane. So far I have read two of his novels (and am almost done with a third): Shutter Island and Gone Baby Gone. Both of these novels are compelling stories with fascinating and well-developed characters.

Shutter Island revolves around a U.S. Marshal traveling to an insane asylum on a remote island to investigate the disappearance of one of the inmates. The characters and the plot of this story are quite complex. For instance, along the way we learn that U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels is on the island for personal as well as professional reasons. I don’t want to give anything away (although many have probably seen the film), but suffice it to say that this is one “missing persons” mystery with a whole lot going on. If you pay close attention while reading the book, you may well figure out a significant part of the mystery, but the strength of this book is that even if you have figured it out before the end, the storytelling abilities of Mr. Lehane inspire you to read on.

In this novel the characters and the plot were very well-developed and as a writer I was fascinated to see how the author wove the complicated threads of the story together. For those of you that saw the movie without reading the book, I encourage you to pick up a copy. You will find the writing interesting and even knowing the end can’t take away from the power of the characters and the potency of a truly great mystery.

Last time I nominated the Rogue Cop for a truly modern archetype. Dirty Harry of course being the template but we can all get behind a Martin Riggs, your choice of Tango or Cash, or even Lt. Marion ‘Cobra’ Cobretti (even if you don’t want to admit you loved Cobra). The rogue cop is easy to root for; he’s out there doing what needs to be done to take out bad guys in exciting adventures. There’s another modern archetype who’s not quite as exciting…The Nobody.

The Nobody in the modern sense is paradoxically a product of identity. Characters in ancient myth have names and identities strong enough to last centuries, sometimes millenia. Merlin, Achilles, Hercules, Samson, Sinbad etc. These are great heroes whose names have come down with enough power to be shorthand for strength, cunning, honesty or whatever the case may be. But if you needed a farmer in myth or folklore you usually just called him farmer. Or smith or goatherd or whatever they were. No need for a name, woodcutter was an identity. Eventually though as we get into the modern age everyone gets an identity. A first name, last name and even a middle name. Sounds good but there’s a downside; the sociological concept of anomie. In a city of millions of people a name might not mean much especially if it’s John Smith. And that’s how we get The Nobody.

The Nobody is so plain and conforms to routine and regulation so completely he’s almost invisible. Their clothes are dull. Their voices are soft and their words don’t sink in. They get ignored by the opposite sex and bullied by bosses and other coworkers. If they drive, their car is grey and gets good gas mileage. If the faucet leaks in their apartment they rarely complain to the landlord and if they do, the landlord ignores them. Whatever their job is they do it well but anyone else could probably do it just as well. In fact the Nobody’s job is important to the archetype even though the Nobody’s job is rarely important. It tends to be bureaucratic or corporate in nature and probably happens in a cubicle under fluorescent lights.

So if it’s so damn boring how can it make any kind of story? Well the beauty of The Nobody is his very plainness. Since he’s so formless you can use the exact same archetype to tell all kinds of different stories. You can keep it bleak and depressing like About Shmidt— a man who retires from his job as an actuary (a job so boring no one really knows what it is) to discover that he has no connection to anything in his life. A good storyteller can actually make the Nobody’s boring character the interesting thing about the character. That sounds like it doesn’t make sense but the Coen’s do it all the time (The Man Who Wasn’t There, A Serious Man). There’s a dark side too if you want it. Travis Bickle is a Nobody who’s disconnect is so bad he appears to be in pain talking to a woman but smiles while he’s pumping blood from the bullet wound in his neck.

And then of course there’s freedom. When you’re a Nobody you’re a blank slate. What do you really have to lose anymore? Fight Club and American Beautyare two brilliant films that came out about the same time. I always thought they were two sides of one story coin. Both feature Nobodies (the narrator in Fight Club isn’t even addressed by name until the third act. He’s Tyler Durden. If that’s a spoiler shame on you for never watching Fight Club) who lead cubicle farm existences. Of course they’re only existing so both of them start exploring the possibilities of freedom. Fight Club, one of the rare movies that manages to be better than the book, is the young man trying to define manhood and freedom. American Beauty is the middle aged man trying to recapture the freedom of youth. Of course Lester Burnham doesn’t get quite as far as Tyler Durden but that’s only because he gets shot in the back of the head (if that’s a spoiler shame on you for never having watched American Beauty).

That freedom is also what makes this modern for me. Mythic tales deal with fate and destiny. The Nobody is not fated to break out of existence and slay dragons. At some point and on some level he has to choose to find a definition other than the one he has now. Of course, there’s no guarantee that he’s going to find anything. Nor is there a guarantee that if he does find something it’s actually going to be better. But if it was guaranteed it wouldn’t be much of a story would it.

Starting out as a young writer I never wrote stories. Poetry was more my speed. And as a young poet I wrote my share of really, really bad poetry complete with awkward rhymes and sappy subject matter. But somewhere in my junior year of high school I was introduced to a poet that changed my writing forever. That poet was Lawrence Ferlinghetti and the poem that changed my life was called “Sometime During Eternity”.

Sometime During Eternity

Sometime during eternity
some guys show up
and one of them
who shows up real late
is a kind of carpenter
from some square-type place
like Galilee
and he starts wailing
and claiming he is hep
to who made heaven
and earth
and that the cat
who really laid it on us
is his Dad

And moreover
he adds
It’s all writ down
on some scroll-type parchments
which some henchmen
leave lying around the Dead Sea somewheres
a long time ago
and which you won’t even find
for a coupla thousand years or so
or at least for
ninteen hundred and fortyseven
of them
to be exact
and even then
nobody really believes them
or me
for that matter

You’re hot
they tell him

And they cool him

They stretch him on the Tree to cool
And everybody after that
is always making models
of this Tree
with Him hung up
and always crooning His name
and calling Him to come down
and sit in
on their combo
as if he is THE king cat
who’s got to blow
or they can’t quite make it

Only he don’t come down
from His Tree

Him just hang there
on His Tree
looking real Petered out
and real cool
and also
according to a roundup
of late world news
from the usual unreliable sources
real dead

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

This poem blew my young Catholic mind. What genius to take the story of Jesus and translate it into Beatnik terms. I was hooked. From then on I immersed myself in the Beats: Corso, Ginsberg, Kerouac, and Cassady, among others. I began to experiment with my own style. I embraced free verse, finally breaking free of the constraints of traditional poetry. The subject matter I explored became more sophisticated and more dark. Reading the poem by Ferlinghetti opened up a whole new world of writing to me. I felt I had finally found my voice. To this day my poetry still carries the mark of the Beats.

If you haven’t read it and even if poetry isn’t really your thing, I highly recommend Ferlinghetti’s poetry book A Coney Island of the Mind. It is a truly inspired piece of writing. And I am a firm believer that everyone needs to read Ginsberg’s “Howl” at least once before they die. This is poetry at its most raw and powerful. How can you go wrong with an opening line that reads:

I often wonder if I would have continued writing poetry had I not found “Sometime During Eternity”. Quite honestly I wonder if I might still be Catholic. That poem caused me to look at a whole lot more than just poetry with new eyes. It affected me deeply and isn’t that the point of poetry?

Whenever I walk into a Barnes and Noble two things happen:
1. I breathe a little easier because being surrounded by books is like therapy for me.
2. After that euphoric experience my senses become immediately overloaded with all the possibilities. Which book should I choose? Do I go with an old reliable author or do I try to find someone new? Do I have enough money to take that chance?
What ends up happening is that I browse through the shelves and when a title or a cover catches my eye, I pick up the book and read the first few lines. If it doesn’t grab my attention, I put the book down and move on.

The first lines of a novel are so important and so many of the great ones have been taken. So how do we draw the reader in? How do we make him/her take interest in what we have to say and want to read more? Here is my two cents worth:

1. Start in the middle.
Many people struggle with writing the first paragraph of an essay, let alone a novel. One technique that has helped many is to start a story somewhere in the middle, then craft a beginning that logically and interestingly brings the reader to that point. There is no rule that says you must begin at the beginning and if you are staring at line after scratched out line of false beginnings, perhaps moving along to a different part of the story will help you figure out a way to draw in the reader.

2. Start in the middle.
This time I mean start your story in the middle of the actual story. Draw the reader in by indicating that this has been going on awhile. It may just make them wonder what has been happening up to this point. Of course, you will need to give them that information somewhere down the line or else you will upset your reader and they will curse your name.

3. Start with dialogue.
Most human beings are voyeuristic by nature and starting a story with a conversation between two characters might just be the ticket to causing the reader to read on.

4. Pose a question.
But it will need to be a good one; one that makes the reader think. You will also need to eventually answer the question. Be sure you know the answer the question you pose in the first couple of lines or you could disappoint the reader later on. This technique will probably work best if you are using a first person narrator in your story.

5. Give us a character to connect with.
If in the first couple of sentences we meet someone that we can identify with on some level, we are more likely to want to continue reading to see what happens to them. How does one do this in a mere three or four lines? That is a fantastic question and one that I am not sure I can answer in this space.

The first lines of a novel or story are the worm on the hook so to speak. Have fun with them. Seek out those books and stories you love most and read over and over again and take a look at the first couple of lines. What drew you in? What caused you to want to continue to read this story? Many of the best beginnings have already been written, but that doesn’t mean there cannot be many more added to that list.

Writing is Cake?

This blog is a loose collection of posts, stories, wisdom, and ideas from a writing group based out of Phoenix, Arizona. The name comes from our constant struggle to convince ourselves writing is easy.
And, hey, who doesn't like cake?